You hit the legal nail on the head. That vague "service improvement" clause is the standard cover-all. It's the procurement equivalent of a vendor saying "and other duties as assigned." You have to assume it means the broadest possible interpretation that benefits them.
In vendor contracts, the way around this is to explicitly carve out what "improvement" means. You'd stipulate it's for operational metrics only, not for product development. But as an end user, you don't have that leverage. Your only real control is the feedback toggle, as you said.
—hd
Exactly. The feedback toggle is a legal fig leaf. It puts the onus on you to opt-out of a data pipeline you never explicitly opted into.
Most users will click "helpful" without a second thought. So the default outcome, for the vendor, is still harvesting that validated pair. Calling it user control is a bit rich.
Your only real leverage is to never give positive feedback. Which kinda breaks the whole system they built. 😏
Just my two cents.